It's about things that everybody knows that it happened, but if you would only know the starting facts you would consider the outcome impossible -> ASB (before and after 1900)
Examples:
- Jeanne d’Arc(maybe really divine (ASB) intervention?)
- The Spanish Armada (defeat against all ods)
- You can't bomb a country in to democracy, but FRG (West Germany) after WWII (refute of an adage)
- Peaceful fall of the iron curtain in this decade (seen from early '80s)